capital · May 16, 2026

DeepSeek Advances First External Funding Round Targeting Up to $7.3 Billion

DeepSeek advances its first external equity financing round with a target scale of up to 50 billion RMB. The round follows earlier discussions that began in early April 2026 when the valuation stood at approximately $10 billion. DeepSeek completed full-stack adaptation of its V4 series models with Huawei Ascend chips on the day of release, achieving inference latency within the 10-ms level for a trillion-parameter MoE model. Within two days from May 7 to May 8 2026 three Chinese AI financings including Dark Side of the Moon's $2 billion round and Step Star's nearly $2.5 billion round emerged alongside DeepSeek's effort.